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Twitter Rolls Out Stricter Rules On Abusive Content (apnews.com)
Twitter has begun enforcing stricter policies on violent and abusive content like hateful images or symbols, including those attached to user profiles. From a report: The new guidelines, which were first announced one month ago, were put into place Monday. Monitors at the company will weigh hateful imagery in the same way they do graphic violence and adult content. If a user wants to post symbols or images that might be considered hateful, the post must be marked "sensitive media." Other users would then see a warning that would allow them to decide whether to view the post. Twitter is also prohibiting users from abusing or threatening others through their profiles or usernames. While the new guidelines became official on Monday, the social media company continues to work out internal monitoring tools and it is revamping the appeals process for banned or suspended accounts. But the company will also begin accepting reports from users.
Twitter should just prevent users from writing their own comments, and instead let users pick from a predefined list of comments that have been deemed acceptable. Based on what I've seen of Twitter comments lately, they could have approved comments like 'Fuck Drmupf!!;!!#!', and 'Women can have penises, too!' and 'That is racist!'. Those alone would cover about 95% of typical Twitter comments these days. They could even take it a step beyond that, and instead of having a user pick a pre-approved comment, Twitter could just choose one automatically on behalf of the user each day.
The only problem is that they have history of enforcing rules against racists, crazies and trolls rather halfheartedly and the few times they've at least tried to enforce those rules properly those normally excluded racists, crazies and trolls have cried fowl.
In all seriousness twitter has never really been a place where any even slightly valuable dialogue takes place. 140 characters and a massive potential audience is great for chanting slogans, both political and advertisement ones, mindless drivel and abuse (there's dozens of people who have regularly do what Milo Yiannopolis got banned for), but not much else. I don't think anything has caused as massive of a regression in public discourse as twitter has so the sooner they finally destroy their platform and run themselves into bankruptcy, which should have long since happened seeing how they've never come close to turning a profit, the better.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
So, you're wrong. But you probably already knew that.
In the case of the baker/cake/gay-wedding:
When you operate a business of public accommodation, that is, a business that is open to the public, you have to operate under certain rules and laws. One of those laws is that you cannot deny service to a person solely based on that person's inclusion in a protected class.
Now, federally, there are several protected classes. They include, sex, age, nation of origin, and race. (This list is not exhaustive.)
Now, that means, if you operate a business open to the public, you cannot refuse service to someone simply and solely because they are a woman, or because they are black.
States can add to the list of federally protected classes, but may not remove anything from that list.
Colorado, where the bakery/gay-wedding case took place has added sexual orientation to that list.
Which means that the bakery could not, legally, refuse service to the couple simply because they are gay.
If the bakery had been booked solid, and could not have produced the wedding cake in the time required, it wouldn't have been a discrimination case.
If the bakery didn't even offer wedding cakes as one of the services they offered, it wouldn't have been a discrimination case.
But because they do make wedding cakes, and because the owner made it clear he wasn't selling the couple a wedding cake because they were gay, it was discrimination, and it was illegal under Colorado's laws.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.